The odd theme of the week has been moving walkways. It started off with an email from Christine Sun Kim on a project we’re working on, about the history of elevators, which led me down a rabbit-hole on Elisha Otis, who invented elevators as we know it and demonstrated one at the World’s Fair by putting his son in one and chopping the rope it was suspended from with an ax. Later in the week, I learned the term genericide – and how the Escalator brand fell victim to it by becoming the common term for moving staircases. Meanwhile, despite the government shutdown giving me much more agency over my time, my morning meditations have been more chaotic than ever. It ends up that I’ve gotten used to shaping my days around external requirements. Without them, I’ve been walking through my days without handrails, which is both liberating and strangely uncomfortable. When I know what’s “required of me,” I end up allowing the demands of other people quell my own needs for daily fulfillment. Clearing my inbox takes precedence over clearing the thoughts swimming around in my head. Responding to everyone else’s needs get in the way of my own basic prerequisites for life – sometimes even meals and staying hydrated. In my meditations, this has meant that I’ve found satisfaction of being on a mental moving walkway of sorts. It’s easy to have peace of mind when you know that the day ahead is paved with ticking off assignments. But when face to face with the prospect of making headway toward my life’s purpose, sitting still for 30 minutes feels like a bloodbath.
One of the most helpful tips I’ve learned about meditation is that it’s not about being in that state of zen or clarity, but actually about those moments when you realize your mind has wandered, and you make an intentional choice to table that thought and go back to your center. Meditation can appear to be about getting to a state that you can then coast on, but as I enter my third year of regular practice, it’s becoming clear that this is truly an activity. It requires a certain vigilance and attentiveness, much less a moving walkway and more like a series of suspended bricks that like you need to scale like Super Mario. The present moment is not a ride that will whisk you along, but rather a never-ending collection that must each be caught, otherwise missed. This can sound stressful, but like most things in the universe there is a rhythm to be found, a groove to catch. In fact, finding that and staying in it sounds like a much more exciting life than simply finding enlightenment and staying static forever.